


A Work of Art

by kumakitten



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M, Surprise Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 14:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3293570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kumakitten/pseuds/kumakitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank wakes up one morning to discover that his boyfriend of nearly two years has left him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Work of Art

**Author's Note:**

> One-shot.

The bed feels empty without him here. When I reach out to touch him, I am met with nothing but cold sheets, my body missing the warmth of his against mine immediately once I register everything in my head.

We never did do anything beyond cuddling, because that was one of the things we did best. We’d promised each other that someday in the future, it was definitely a possibility, but for now we just enjoyed being wrapped up in the sheets with our bodies pressed intimately to each other, without anything sexual undertoning it.

He was perfection, to say the least. His shoulder-length black hair was quite a stark contrast to his near-porcelain skin, beautiful just for that reason, his eyes a brownish-green that lit up when he talked about his passions.

I loved him with all my heart. He was all I ever wanted, because what we had was such a special thing that I do not think anyone else could ever even compare in the slightest, and I would not wish for them to. But now, I realize sullenly, he has gone, and I will probably never see him again. 

Gerard was a work of art all in itself, one that could not be replicated. Sure, there were some mistakes in the piece; slightly faded out lines in some places that were hastily re-covered, erased and relined in a different, not as satisfying way as they’d once been. I saw those things, and I knew those things, but I still saw him as flawless all the same.  
Tears stream down my face, though I do not acknowledge this until my eyes are blurred, wiping the water carelessly before I finally decide to get out of bed. 

The only thing that helps is the memories, the only things I have left to ensure it all wasn’t some intense dream. Photographs of the two of us are strewn about all over my apartment, some drawings of his with those as well. I walk out of my room and toward the first one I see, picking it up; it is of me, I realize with a smile. I trace the lines with my fingertip, admiring the feeling of it and feeling warm knowing who had made them appear.

_“Frank!” Gerard squeaked anxiously, eyes wide as he realized what I was holding. His hands went wild, trying to grab at the picture hastily. “Give that back!”  
I smiled, not even bothering to look over at him as I looked over the drawing with awe. Everything was perfect, down to the tattoos that covered my arms. Gerard must’ve really studied me a whole lot if it was this amazing. _

_Suddenly, I do not see myself anymore, as Gerard has finally succeeded in snatching the drawing away from me. When he speaks, his voice is quiet and embarrassed.  
“I probably would’ve let you see it,” he tells me honestly, looking at the drawing version of me and not my actual face. His own face is flushed, cheeks tinged pink. “Just...not yet. I didn’t think you were ready.” _

_“Ready for what?” I asked quietly, studying his face intently. God, he was so beautiful._  
_Gerard looked up, eyes boring into mine._  
_“Well, me, I guess,” he answered truthfully. “Knowing that I...”_  
_He stops abruptly at that, biting on his lower lip, averting his eyes to the side as he refuses to look at me. I frowned, knowing what he was about to say, but wondering why he couldn't just say it. Didn’t he know I felt the same?_

_“I really like you, Frankie.”_

_I smiled widely at that, heart nearly soaring out of my chest. He still wouldn’t look at me, so I slowly made my way over to him, grabbing his face gently with the both of my hands.  
“Hey, Gee. There’s no need to be embarrassed,” I whispered, finally getting him to look at me. Our eyes are locked now, and there’s no turning back from this. I gently ran my thumb over his cheek, leaning in even more now. “I like you a lot, too.”_

_Gerard smiled at that - a real one, the kind he gave when he was actually satisfied with one of his drawings, or he finds out that I do still have coffee in my cabinet. It was a genuine one. I couldn’t believe I caused it._

_Our lips met, but it was graceful somehow, not a crash like I’d always expected; Gerard kissed me like he had all the time in the world to, like he’d been waiting for this and never wanted it to end. I felt the exact same way, and suddenly it became more heated, more desperate._

_I kissed Gerard like it was all I was ever meant to do in my life, and it’s crazy to think like that but it’s the only way I can explain it. Gerard grabbed the collar of my shirt, pulling me even closer to him, panting in between kisses._

_We ended up in my bed, having fought our way in there throughout not wanting to de-attach from each other, but once we got there, he broke away suddenly, shaking his head quickly._

_“Frank, I don’t really want to-” he began. I cut him off, giving a gentle smile. I already knew what he was going to say, so I put my finger to his lips before speaking._

_“We don’t have to, Gee. We can just lay here if you want.”_

_The smile he gave me was so bright that it made me feel better than sex ever could, anyway.  
We got under the covers, facing each other and smiling at each other wordlessly; the looks we gave each other say far more than words could describe. I brought my hand up to trace his cheek carefully._

_“You’re beautiful, Gee,” I told him honestly, smiling warmly. Gerard’s eyes sparkled, and I knew that even if he didn't believe that, he believed me, and knew that I was not lying. “You spend all this time trying to create the greatest work of art, when you already are one yourself.”_  
_He blushed from my words, unable to suppress a happy giggle._  
_“Thank you,” he said lowly, leaning in to capture my lips with his again. When the kiss ended, Gerard’s eyes bore into mine again, a small smile on his lips._  
_“I’ll be your work of art if you’ll be mine.”  
_

I put the picture down, sighing to myself and bringing my hand up to run it through my hair. I’d really fucked up this time, hadn’t I? Gerard was a very timid, anxious person, and I should have understood.  
But after a year and a half of dating, I’d thought it would be okay to ask. I thought he’d understand. We didn’t need it, of course not, we already had each other; but I’d only been asking, and now, he was gone.

I had no reason to believe he wouldn’t be back, but it was one of those things I felt in my soul. I had woken up without him by my side for three months now, and after having never had that happen for a year and a half prior, it hurt like hell.  
Even if he came back, things would be bad. They couldn’t be like they were, because I’d fucked it all up by asking those four words, the ones we didn’t need in our relationship, because it was already perfect as it was.

I knew he wasn’t the type to consider something like that, but it hurt nonetheless. He was my everything, and I’d thought that I was his, too, even if it seemed to good to be true.

I make my way over to the kitchen, grabbing the coffee out of the cabinet and starting up the coffee maker. I rub my hands over my face as I wait for it to brew, breathing in the wonderful aroma as deeply as I can. It’s funny, I didn’t realize how much I loved the smell of coffee until I had Gerard, and again when I lost him. Memories linked with smell hurt a lot, but I couldn’t just stop drinking coffee because of him.

It’s not like I’m the one that left, anyway. But honestly, I am not even angry at that fact, I just really miss Gerard. There’s no anger or bitterness to it.  
Ray tells me just to try and forget Gerard, because it isn’t healthy to obssess over someone who’s gone. And while Ray is right about that, it isn’t as easy to do as he would think.  
I just want my Gerard back. How could I ever just forget about him?

***

A week later, I finally hear about Gerard again, this time from Mikey. Mikey is one of my best friends alongside Ray, and Mikey is the only one that was as close to Gerard as I was - am - being his brother and all.

Mikey’s eyes are tear-stained when I open the door. His incessant knocking has stopped and is replaced by choked-back sobs. He looks me dead in the eye, shaking his head slowly.

“Mikey? What’s wrong?” I ask, thoroughly confused as I tilt my head to the side. Mikey’s acting as if someone has died.

“Frank, I can’t take it anymore!” he snaps, throwing his arms in the air as he walks in my apartment, looking around, throwing his arms around himself in a huff as he takes in our surroundings. He whirls around on me, squinting.

“Have you been eating?” he questions severely. I blink a few times, frowning at him. Why wouldn’t I be?  
“Of course I have,” I tell him truthfully. Mikey sighs, walking through the apartment. He freezes when he sees the drawing of myself that Gerard had drawn, picking it up with a shaky hand.

He stares at it for an abnormal amount of time and suddenly, it’s as if everything is in fast forward. He sprints around the apartment, collecting anything to do with Gerard, including actual photographs of us, slamming them down on the kitchen table.  
He turns to face me, fresh tears streaming down his face.

“You kept it all,” he says, a little bit in awe and also sounding surprised. “But how can you just...do that?”

I cross my arms, making my way over to Mikey. “Just because he left me doesn’t mean I don’t still love him. I thought I made that pretty clear, Mikey.”

Mikey shakes his head, muttering something under his breath. I can only make out the words ‘crazy’ and ‘dead’, which confuse me even further. I narrow my eyes.

“Did you just come here to insult me and go through all my stuff?” I question him angrily. Mikey’s supposed to be one of my best friends.

“You do know he’s not coming back, right?” Mikey begins, and all the anger suddenly leaves me at once. 

“What?” I ask, my voice sounding smaller than I thought it would.

Mikey’s expression is one of pure disbelief as he stares me down. “It’s not because he doesn’t want to, of course,” he goes on, not making any sense. “He loved you so much, Frank. You have no idea.”

“Then why’d he leave?” I spit suddenly, the anger returning at full force. I want to attack Mikey, though I’m not quite sure what that would solve. It’s not like he’s trying to hurt me with this information.

Mikey laughs, a sound devoid of all joy. It’s tasteless and wrong and he just shakes his head, eyes closed and hands gripped into tight fists by his sides. Tears fall down onto his nose. Why does he keep crying?

My anger deflates yet again - fucking mood swings - and I walk closer to Mikey, reaching my hand out to put it on his shoulder. I half expect him to shove it off and reject me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he surprises me by pulling me in for a full hug, gripping me tightly, placing his chin on my head.

“Oh god Frank, I can’t do this anymore,” he sobs. I feel my hair getting wet, though I don’t care because I care more about Mikey. But what is he talking about? This guy makes even less sense than I do, and that’s saying something.

“Can’t do what anymore?” I ask softly, my hands on his back. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, but obviously I did something wrong. Mikey pulls back suddenly, glaring at me.

“It’s so easy for you!” he cries out, lashing out at me. “You can’t even let yourself believe what really happened!”

“What the actual fuck are you talking about?” I demand to know, hysteria making itself known in my voice.

Mikey stops suddenly, halfway to the front door. His body shakes with the intensity of his sobs before he’s eerily still, turning around to face me calmly, a sorrowful look in his eyes. They look so much like Gerard’s that it nearly kills me.

“I really want to tell you, Frank, believe me,” he begins, venom shot into the last word in the sentence. He sighs before continuing. “But I believe that’s Ray’s job. He’ll be a lot nicer about it than me.”

And before I can formulate a reply to that, Mikey has left me alone in the apartment once more.

***

I don’t actually hear from Ray for about two weeks, but when I do, I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Mikey’s words keep echoing in my head, and if I’ve been purposely ignoring Ray because of that, he never has to know. If he asks, I’ve just been really busy.  
Of course, the reality of that is that I’ve been doing nothing but sit at the apartment, go to work, eat, sleep, rinse and repeat.

He comes over one day while I am eating spaghetti from a can - Gerard was always the better cook - and doesn’t even knock. He just lets himself in, looking exhausted and downright depressed. It’s not a look I am used to seeing on Ray at all. 

He runs a hand through his fro, looking at me and forcing himself to smile a bit. I wonder what he thinks about my bedraggled appearance; ever since Gerard left, I haven’t made an effort to look nice.

“Hi, Ray,” I greet him softly, raising the hand that I’m not currently holding the fork in. “It’s been a bit, hasn’t it?”

“Frank, we need to talk.” He says abruptly, getting straight to the point. He sits across from me, waiting until I’ve finished eating my hopeless excuse for a dinner. When I’m finished, I toss out the garbage and sit across from him once more, raising a single eyebrow.

“What is it, Toro?” I ask genially. Normally he’d crack a smile at me using his last name, but his face is morose.

“Frank, what day is it?”

That catches me off guard. I don’t actually know; I just know that it’s one of my days off work, thankfully, and that I was going to practice my guitar. I bite my lip, thinking about it. That seems to be all the answer Ray needs, however. He heaves a sigh, staring at me.

“Mikey told me that you still have all of the stuff Gerard drew.”

“Yes,” I answer cautiously, furrowing my eyebrows. What does this have to do with anything? And why does everyone keep acting like it’s such a big deal? “Is that a problem?”

“Denial is always the hardest step,” Ray muses to himself, sounding sad. “Frank, where do you think Gerard is? Don’t you think we would have mentioned him by now?”

I have an awful feeling about this. It’s like something is pinpricking my brain, wanting me to think of something, but I absolutely refuse to let it surface. It is giving me major anxiety.

I stand up suddenly, the chair pushing back so hard the legs squeak. I shake my head, bringing my hands up to the side of it.

“No, because he left all of us!” I scream. It’s all too much for me, and I can’t take it anymore. “He didn’t let any of us know that he was going, he just took off and left, and it’s all my fault! I know he didn’t want to marry me but why did he just leave--”

“Oh, Frank,” Ray whispers softly, his voice cracking as he reaches out to touch me. I hadn’t even realized he’d gotten so close. When I open my eyes, they meet with his, and I see tears there. I feel my own making an appearance. “Frank, you know he would never do that to us.”

“But he did!” I screech in agony, suddenly not giving a fuck anymore, turning away fom Ray and running throughout the house aimlessly, not caring when I knock into the couch. I flip over it violently and land on the floor beside it, staring up at the ceiling expressionlessly.

Ray rushes over to me, and I think I hear him yelling my name, but I cannot reply. It’s getting rather dark, and I faintly recall hitting my head before promptly passing out.

_“Frankie, what’s the big deal?” Gerard giggled. It was the most adorable sound in the universe, and my stomach flips every time I hear it. Damn, how’d I get so lucky?_

_Instead of answering, I smirked at him, grabbing him and spinning him around in my arms. He laughed, amused by my silly antics. I set him down carefully on the couch, leaning in close enough to him that our noses touched._

_“You’ll see,” I promised him, pressing my lips to his briefly. “Wait here.”_

_I ran to grab the small black box that I had succeeded in hiding from him for the past month. I’d been waiting for the perfect time to present it to my wonderful boyfriend, but it seemed like it was never going to happen because life isn’t a fairy tale. So I figured, why not now?_

_I finally found it nearly five minutes later, having hidden it so well that even I myself couldn’t find it - clearly, I was the master of hiding things._

_I ran back into the living room, confused when I didn’t see Gerard on the couch._

_“Gee?” I called out curiously, looking around the house for him, box in my hands. A small white piece of paper on the kitchen table grabbed my attention, and I rolled my eyes a bit when I saw it; Gerard could have just told me that he was leaving verbally, but of course he liked doing silly things like that. Nonetheless, I picked it up and read it._

__**Dear Frankie,  
** **Out on a coffee run! You forgot it again, you asshole.  
** **You can show me that surprise when I get back. I can’t wait. :)  
** **I love you!  
** **xoGee**

_I sighed in exasperation, but decided not to get too upset about it. After all, I’d waited a month, what was ten minutes more? I went back into the living room, sitting on the couch and looking down at the little box in my hands, flipping it over and feeling the velvet on my fingers._

_Gerard and I had never even discussed the topic of marriage, because he wasn’t really into conventional shit like that. Sure, he was sweet but he wasn’t particularly sappy, and we didn’t feel like it was something we really needed in our relationship anyway._

_Just being together was enough for us. But still, I wanted to ask him. I’d never been more sure about anything before in my life._

_But thirty minutes later, I knew something was terribly wrong. Gerard still hadn’t returned from his coffee run, and those usually only took him ten minutes at the most.  
_He’s probably just stuck in traffic,_ I’d reasoned to myself, but I knew it was a lie._

_The phone call I received five minutes later confirmed my worst fear._

_“Your boyfriend was involved in a car accident,” the lady at the hospital informed me._

_The box falls out of my hands and onto the floor._

***

When I wake up, I feel myself shaking violently, breaths coming out in staccato, and realize that I am beginning to have a panic attack.

“No!!! That isn’t what happened at all, my brain is a liar!!! A filthy fucking liar!!!” I scream, reaching out and knocking over whatever I can find on the coffee table. Ray springs into action, holding my arms down and attempting to get me to stop.

“Frank, get yourself together!” He begs me, eyes widened with fear. He hadn’t known I was this bad, had he? No one knew. Not even I did! That’s the cruelest part of it all.

“Where is he?!” I demand viciously, trying desperately to get Ray off of me. He isn’t budging. “Where the fuck is he, Ray?!”

“Gerard is dead, Frank. He died three months ago, and where the hell were you?” Ray takes me by surprise, having a breakdown of sorts himself. He’s shaking, but he’s still stronger than me so I’m still pinned down. That, and I’m in shock by his words. “You didn’t even attend his funeral, you selfish asshole! His final goodbye, and you missed it. And all because you just couldn’t get yourself to realize the fact that he died!”

I’m beyond pissed that Ray is suggesting such a thing, I want to hurt him, but at the same time my brain is telling me that it’s the truth. That dream I’d just had felt more like a memory and a nightmare coalesced into one, but the truth all the same.

I finally lay limp under his weight, eyes open and staring at the ceiling. I can feel nothing now but pure emptiness. Gerard.

Ray seems apologetic, frowning down at me as tears drip onto my shirt, but he says nothing. He knows I needed to hear it, and now it’s all over.

Gerard died.

He never refused my proposal.

He didn’t just leave.

He was killed in a car accident at approximately 7:46 PM on a rainy Sunday, one of the only days off we shared.

My work of art was destroyed.


End file.
